This is a question we come across pretty frequently and can be a challenge to answer.
Marketing has always been necessary for a business, it not only helps build your brand and spread awareness about your products or services but it additionally improve sales, develop businesses and capture customers.
In the past, most of the marketing campaign would be on TV, radio, ads in newspapers and magazines, flyers, product or service brochures, there was no Social Media, no Youtube, and the website was a basic text-heavy page with some graphics.
The marketing campaign has evolved remarkably just like how websites have changed since 1991 when the first ever website was published. Presently, things are far more immediate, marketing and website design have continued to evolve at an unparalleled pace. For one thing, marketing is almost always done online and owning a website is now common for businesses to market their brands globally. Believe or not, your website is your best marketing tool.
Nowadays, your visitor’s first impression of your business is almost exclusively based on your website. Oftentimes, an outdated website can have an adverse bearing on your business because it represents your business and brand 24/7 hence, it is imperative that it is doing the best job it can. However, redesigning a website is not just a piece of cake. It entails a sound thought, time, and possibly money, but the upside can be tremendous. It’s critical to note that “redesign” doesn’t fundamentally mean you need to convert your branding. In fact, redesigns can just involve in creating practical adjustments to making your website become competent. After all, your website can be one of the most influential marketing tools your company can have.
Research carried out found most businesses believe that their competitor’s website is actually more solid than their own and some actually think their own website is not representing their brand. When you get a feeling of jealousy because your competitor’s website is great looking with impressive content, then it’s time to pull the trigger. Ask yourself these questions:
WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME I UPDATED MY WEBSITE?
If you’ve created your website several years ago, chances are it’s behind in terms of layout and functionality. Its code is possibly outdated making it incompatible with the latest and popular browsers. Long passed the heydays when it was enough to just have a website, people have become more savvy and picky these days, with so many accessible information, different brands and businesses, competing for your customer’s attention has become wicked. Consequently, it’s imperative that you keep your website current and in line with up-to-date layout trends, technological progressions and search engine algorithms.
A dull and difficult to navigate website can turn off your visitors. “Old school is cool” does not apply when it comes to the Internet and the digital world. Website standards continually evolve which means your potential leads preferences changes faster than a flash of lightning. What was popular in the past, will definitely not in the future. Most people are wired to like fresh, latest, and up-to-date so stay ahead of the game. If you want your business to succeed, always put your best foot forward, make your website memorable with fresh content, stunning layouts, and impressive functionalities.
Does my website load fast?
Website speed plays a pivotal role in the success of your business. Clicking on a website link may look like a simple thing but behind the scenes, hundreds of requests are spontaneously pinged throughout in short seconds and a lot can go wrong.
When your website takes longer than anticipated to load, it negatively affects the user experience instantaneously, any time your UX takes a hit so does your conversion rate. You’ll apparently see higher page abandonment and bounce rates as well. Studies show that an extra two seconds of loading time can increase your website’s bounce rate by 103% and can cause a 7% drop in conversion rates, even fractions of a second matter. Additionally, your website speed impacts its visibility and searchability.
Website speed is now a Google ranking factor. If you don’t have a decent website performance, your website’s visibility on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) may drop which could result in lower traffic levels.
With your business success at risk, website speed can’t be disregarded. Optimizing your website’s performance as fully as you can is vital. A clever way to start is by testing the load time to recognize how delayed your website populates then work on minimizing it. We’ve listed some of the common factors for slow website speed.
- Advertisement on the website is over-sized and too many, and visitor’s browser doesn’t support the advertisement format such as Flash content which is not supported by Google Chrome.
- Large and wrong format images expectedly take a great time to load up and unoptimized high-resolution images can use heaps of bandwidth while loading.
- Uncompressed codes, unnecessary white spaces, large and dense elements can make your website’s stylesheet grow larger in size.
- Your web host provider is giving you a shared server, which means you’re sharing space, resources and in a queue with many other websites.
A slowdown in website loading speed can decline visitor engagement and reduces business revenue.
Is it necessary for my website to be mobile-responsive?
A study made in October 2016 shows that mobile traffic officially exceeded desktop traffic on the internet. People are more likely to view websites from their mobile devices versus their desktops simply because it’s fast and easy. This trend is growing stronger and it’s becoming a standard habit today. By making your website mobile-friendly you can reach more and more customers around the globe.
To be competitive in today’s online market, having a mobile-responsive website becomes a necessity. No matter how remarkable, valuable and unique your products or services are if it’s not readily accessible from a mobile device your business is as if non-existent. People will regard a website they have a great mobile experience with credible. In business, reputation is everything and most businesses can’t bear to deliver customers a bad experience whether digital or otherwise.
Google says 61% of users are unlikely to return to a mobile site they had trouble accessing and 40% visit a competitor’s site instead. Mobile usability is regarded as the third most valuable of all the factors looked at by Google. Having a mobile-responsive website not only paves the way for sales and lead generation, but it also ensures your business is ahead of the competition.
Is my website easy to navigate?
Most visitors don’t have the time to dig through your website and figure out how it works, all they ever care about is find the relevant information that they need. Navigation is crucial for the over-all user experience throughout the website, it can make or break your website’s overall performance in terms of visitors retention, engagement, and shifting them through the conversion funnel.
Good navigation can speed up search and allows visitors to search with ease and confidence before a call to action can be made. Having simple and consistency in navigation ensures consistency in user experience. On the other hand, bad navigation can appear unstructured and disorganized.
The navigation tools help break content into a logical and coherent group. Your visitors will have a clear understanding of your brand and business. Additionally, good navigation improves your website’s usability and can place your website on higher ranks because it works well with SEO. Therefore, code the navigation in an accessible and usable way ensuring great user experience.
To optimize your website’s navigation, we’ve listed some essential best practices.
- Keep it consistent in both how and where it appears on your website in that way, your visitors will have a good experience, ease of use, and increases their ability to find relevant information they are interested in.
- Separate categories distinctly and noticeably. The category headings must be segregated visually from the sub-categories, even if the categories are related.
- Build all navigation elements clickable links even with drop-down options where clicking a sub-category section.
- Employ precise navigation titles to represent the linked page so visitors grasp what they’re going to perceive and make sure all link verbiage, whether textual or in an image, perfectly represents the equal pages.
- Make each clickable image has ALT text to ensure that visitors know what the link is, regardless of how they are viewing your website.
- Assure the search functionality works it must always provide results, related search and offset misspellings.
WHAT ARE THE COMPLAINTS OF MY VISITORS?
Customer feedback is an essential aspect of operating a business that often gets neglected. Most successful businesses put customer feedback at the center of their customer-relations strategy because they understand that a happier and satisfied customer equates to revenue. They even deliberately ask for feedback and consistently search for ways to make the customer’s experience even better.
If you don’t strive for feedback, you will never be able to make sound decisions to fit the needs of your customers. Understanding the wants and needs of your customers is the best way to gain a read on the overall marketing trend.
Customer’s voice is priceless, don’t underestimate them. Never snub their voice and try to always be responsive. Listening to their valuable opinion and taking action on it will give them a sense of involvement in shaping your business and naturally they’ll feel more attached to your company that benefits your business in creating stronger relations with them. This is the best way to win helpful envoys to spread positive word-of-mouth for you and the cheapest way to acquire new customers and potential clients.
Customer satisfaction and loyalty is a decisive factor that decides the company’s financial performance. There are lots of ways to leverage customer feedback and directly get benefits from it like customer retention, higher revenue, an increase in market share, lower marketing costs and many more. Therefore if you want continued success in your business, engage your customers otherwise, you’ll lose them to a competitor.
how many leads is my website generating?
If your website doesn’t seem to be drawing in leads even though your social media and email marketing campaigns are bringing in lots of traffic, but no one is taking that next step then it’s time to take a hard look. Leads are the life-blood of your business. Your website is intended to work, not to simply sit there and look beautiful. It should be generating leads to help you earn sales and pull in more revenue. However, some businesses struggle with this and while there are a variety of causes for this, your website itself could be the problem. We’ve gathered reasons why leads don’t convert to help you turn the missed a goldmine.
- Inadequate follow-up, respond to messages on social media, email, and return phone calls promptly to connect with potential clients.
- You’re not mobile-friendly, recent studies show that most users prefer to use mobile devices than desktop so optimize your website otherwise, you’d lose tons of traffic and customer simply because they can’t find you.
- You’re not consistent, make certain your content, design and PR is constant in essence, number, and sharing.
- You’re dull, nobody wants to see common landing pages, call-to-actions or web copy so convert your engaging personality into online content.
- Providing equal significance to each lead, classify your leads according to their needs and work on them respectively.
How do I stack up against competitors?
To maintain and improve your market share you need to know how you compare to your competition. The truly successful businesses are those that also learn how they differentiate versus their biggest competitors. It’s critical to reflect on how your website is perceived by others.
Your website comparison should begin with a look at your website’s Google Analytics. Pay attention to the bounce rate and time on page and examine them closely to those of your competitors using Benchmarking in Google. If the data does not stack up, look for ways to develop your onsite content or overall website experience. By assessing the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors, you can weigh all the relevant factors to give your company an advantage.
Do I feel embarrassed by my website?
Your website is usually the first impression of your company and your fundamental marketing tool as well as a resource for your clients. Are you pleased to send customers to your website? This is a critical question to consider because whatever you deem about your website, visitors probably hold the same. If your website hasn’t been updated in years, like circa 2010 graphics, flash players, and navigation that goes nowhere or the employee who designed it moved on and no one took over, you likely need a new website. Having an embarrassing website is like owning a literally rumpled house, you just don’t fancy inviting people back.
Your website should not only showcase your products or services but also its look and feel. It needs to display professionalism and accurately reflect your brand. Make sure it works properly and represents you the way you want to be represented in a positive light. By taking the steps to rectify any inaccuracies or problems you find, can improve your website and enhance your user experience.
Conclusion: There are several reasons why you could want to revamp your website. Knowing the ‘why’ and shaping the project while keeping user experience and function your focus is what usually works. Whenever your website doesn’t work as it should be it the design, conversions or general feedback, it’s a chance to make it better. We hope this article helps answer your question to ensure you’re on the right track in redesigning your website.
Don’t have a website yet? Here’s why you need a website for your business.
Let’s face it, people are becoming dependent on the web in getting information, even purchasing decisions are sometimes influenced by reviews from blogs and on Youtube. Therefore, owning a website in this digital era is a must especially for small businesses. You need an online presence to give your customers information in one click. With a website, your small business gains creditability, it serves as the backbone of your brand making your products or services accessible online at all times.
Your website enables you to promote your products or services faster than a physical store by targeting larger markets on a global scale just by simply having an online presence. You just concentrate on attracting customers by creating relevant content, created in such a way to address their problems and needs. Even if your physical store is closed, your customers can reach out to you 24/7 and 365 days a year and you can send messages instantly through email. This is essential for building a connection with them. It gives convenience to your customers and leads to directly contact you, making the transaction easy.
It’s also a great platform to help you update information about your business at a click of a button and if you’re fast, you might even defeat your competitors. The more informative it is, the more visitors the more potential sales.
Have you been so occupied in your business that your website has been dismissed?
We take pride in building amazing websites in just 7 days without breaking the bank because we believe that stunning websites don’t need to be expensive. We’ve helped businesses grow for over a decade.
We build websites at a fixed price, no crazy contracts, and no lock-in maintenance cost.
If you aren’t 100% satisfied with our work, kick us to the curb before we deploy the site, provided that you have given us what is needed for us to complete the project, and we will give you your money back no questions asked.
Do you plan on creating a website or revamping an old one? Tell us about your project today.
